It's all about demonizing, discrediting and destroying Barack Obama in the eyes of voters, defeating him and denying the Democratic Party the Presidency.
Who is behind it?
In general terms, the Republican Party. In more specific terms, a national alliance of hard-core Conservatives, powerful interests within the corporate-military-industrial-energy complex, Wall Street firms, free trade advocates, anti-tax zealots, militant pro-Israeli ideologues, Christian fundamentalists, racists, sexists, homophobes, anti-unionists and right-wing media shills like Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, the Weekly Standard, Townhall.org and Newsmax. Simply stated, a conglomeration of the forces that have thrived and been influential in the right-wing rule of America during the Reagan-Bush era, and who are determined to not only keep America headed in the same direction Bush/Cheney & Co. have been taking us in, but to complete their agenda of securing permanent dominion over America and the world and turning our nation into a capitalist-corporatist-fascist theocracy.
On the local level, this mentality is personified in the 2-3 rabid Right Wingers who plaster CL groups with an unending litany of lies, smears and hate propaganda about Obama and the Democratic Party day in and day out. Rest assured, nearly every posting you see here that is critical of the Left, no matter what it says or who it purports to have been posted by, is the work of these miscreants. And yes, the postings supposedly from disgruntled Hillary supporters, Nader supporters, 'Reagan Democrats', Black voters who think Obama is wrong for America, and activists who want to disrupt the Democratic Convention are almost entirely their handiwork.
Why are they going after Obama with such ferocity?
For the same reason that Christ was crucified, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were rubbed out, Gandhi, JFK and Martin Luther King were assassinated, and Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years. By occupying the moral high ground, speaking truth to power, challenging our government to do what is right, and by taking a stand for what is truly in the interest of We The People as well as peace and freedom throughout the world, Obama represents a profound threat to an evil, self-serving system of lies, greed and oppression that serves a corrupt elite that is determined to maintain the status quo and protect its strangle-hold on wealth and power by any means necessary. You may rest assured that good old-fashioned racism is also involved.
Are these things that the Right Wingers post all over CL every day about Obama really true? For example, is he a Muslim, did he attend a radical madrassah, does he hate America, does he hate white people, is he a terrorist sympathizer, is he friends with Hamas and bin Laden, does he hate Israel, has he knowingly accepted contributions from terrorists, is he a Communist or a Socialist, is he a homosexual, does he support and promote late-term and after-birth abortions, is he responsible for our high gas prices, is he an arrogant elitist who looks down at working-class Americans, does he disrespect our troops, does he refuse to put his hand over his heart during the National Anthem or say the Pledge of Allegiance, is his wife an America-hating Black supremacist, etc.?
They are absolutely and unequivocally false. Every one of them. The anti-Obama smears you see here every day are either blatant lies or are things that have been taken out of context and re-framed within a different context and a version of things that serves the propaganda interests of the smear-merchants, and spewed forth as fact. When these liars are busted on their bullshit, they either attack and contemptuously dismiss those who confront them, or drop the subject temporarily and move on to other lies, or just keep defiantly posting the same lies over and over anyway. They are hit-and-run artists and character assassins, whose interest is not in constructively debating issues and getting to the truth about the candidates, but rather creating controversy and damaging Obama. As in every presidential campaign dating back to 1968, the Republicans are trying to win by destroying the Democrat as opposed to honestly and fairly promoting their own candidate. They almost never talk-up McCain, they spend 95% of their time and effort running-down Obama. That fact alone speaks loudly as to their legitimacy and their motives.
As for those who are taking the concept of sleazeball dirty tricks to a new low throughout CL, the truest and nicest thing that can be said about them is that they are disturbed, deluded and mired in irrational hate. Psychologically healthy, well-integrated people do not do the things these people are doing.
Do the people who are saying these things actually believe them?
NO. They are very well aware of the fact that 99% of what they're saying is unmitigated bullshit. But they are liars, cheaters, dissemblers and election thieves with an extreme ideological agenda, who are determined to win by whatever means is necessary, and they do not give a rat's patootie about the truth. They are telling these lies and disseminating these smears because they know they can't win honestly and fairly. The Far Right has a track record of success with its sleazy propaganda tactics dating all the way back to the Nixon and Reagan days. They believe that many of you in the electorate (the "unwashed masses" as they like to refer to you) are dumb enough, naive enough, gullible enough, uninformed enough, suggestible enough, blind enough, fearful enough, prejudiced enough, angry enough, confused enough or whacked out enough on religion to fall for their lies and smears again, and in doing so deliver the highest office in the land (again) to the very people who got us into the mess we’re in. Proof positive of the fraudulence and dis-ingenuousness of all of this in the fact that no matter how many times the anti-Obama smears are conclusively and irrefutably shown to be lies, the smear-merchants continue to try to spoon-feed them to you. Like their dirty tricks mentor Karl Rove, they are infused with an almost demonic arrogance as they cut and slash their way through the objects of their wrath, and they actually get a perverse thrill out of being diabolical, dishonest and sleazy.
In this 2008 election campaign, perhaps the most important one in America history, the Far Right is concentrating its efforts on four things: (1) re-energizing its core constituencies through fear, flag-waving bellicose nationalism and the standard "God, Guns and Gays" rhetoric, (2) blaming the Democrats for the failures of the Bush administration as well as the energy crisis and high gas prices, (3) demonizing and discrediting (aka "swift boating") Obama to enough independent and undecided voters so that they will vote for a 3rd party candidate (which helps their cause immensely) in an effprt to swing a few critical states in their favor and (4) fomenting discord between the Obama and Clinton factions so as to split the Democratic Party and siphon off Clinton votes in favor of McCain. Inasmuch as our state is one of the key battleground states that could determine the outcome of the election, they are pouring it on here for all they're worth.
YOU the voting public are the battle ground upon which this political equivalent of chemical weapons is being unleashed. YOU are the cannon fodder for this all-out war on truth, goodness and justice. YOU are the objects of deceit and manipulation through which the nefarious agenda of the Far Right is intended to be accomplished again. YOU are being looked to as unwitting accomplices, yet again, in the destruction of democracy, the defeat of freedom, the perversion of the Constitution and the absolute takeover of America by forces that are every bit as dark and sinister as those that plunged Europe and the world into the most appalling chapter of death and destruction in human history, in the 1930's-1940's.